Western Short StoryRabbit in the Stew Tom Sheehan

Western Short Story

Elias Kincaid sat
in the grass, behind a small mound, in the middle of a Montana
valley. The valley curled upward at its ends toward the mountains,
the morning sun, and the remnant crescent moon fading in the west
like a silver slipper lost from luggage. He’d promised a meal for
the occupants of a wagon broken down in the middle of nowhere. It
carried an older man who was an excellent shot with rifle and handgun
but had bad legs, the man’s sister, and her son and daughter. The
woman’s husband had been killed by a bear and she wanted to get to
a decent sized town to find work and raise her children, the boy
about 10 and the girl about 13.

Kincaid had seen a
cattle drive that was a day away, heading for the railhead at Fenwick
Stalls, the next town. There’d be parts available in the drive’s
chuck wagon to fix the broken wagon. He’d told the old man, Eaton
Webster, that he’d stick around and keep an eye on them, and the
man asked if Kincaid would catch a rabbit for rabbit stew. With a
loop of wire, Kincaid set a snare and waited for action.

The action that
came was not what he wanted.

A lone rider, on a
sorrel, came across the grass from the far side where the foothills
tapered to their last edge. The man wore a black Stetson with a
ragged rim and a drab shirt rolled up at the sleeves, as if ready for
work, or had recently left work. High overhead the buzzards soared in
circles, all below them kept under scrutiny. At a slow walk, as if
the rider was studying the ground keen as a tracker, the horse showed
the beginning of a limp in one foreleg. At one point the animal even
paused, only to be urged ahead by its rider showing one brand of
impatience.

Distaste for the
rider began to rise in Kincaid’s throat, sour as a poor meal. Why
would not a man dismount and take care of his horse, show some
tenderness? The query brought Kincaid fully awake, alert to
additional measures that he noticed about the man.

He found distrust
quickly following distaste as he saw other signs about the stranger;
his left arm had a bandage of sorts around the wrist, the rifle
scabbard attached to the saddle was empty, no canteen appeared
hanging from the pommel, and no portion of a saddle blanket showed up
against the horse’s hide.

All of the signs,
or lack of signs, said “Hurry” to Kincaid, or “Getaway” or
“Vamoose.” The latter might have been said at the point of a gun.
In the grass, his horse hidden, Kincaid stayed motionless and silent.
He was conscious of another sign … his hoping that a rabbit would
not get caught in his snare at this time; with such an event there’d
be a minor but distracting commotion, which he did not want or need.

A few other alerts
came to him as he stayed still in position; Eaton Webster, though a
good shot, as he had stated, was unable to move quickly or well; his
daughter, Laura, the children’s mother, was a very attractive woman
still in bloom, her daughter was a pretty replica of her, and the boy
was a bit frantic as good boys are who cannot yet do the tasks they
want to do, the manhood elements.

Concern about all
of them rose up in Kincaid as he saw the lone rider pull a gun from
its holster and check it out. He took the move as a bugle call, a
snapping to, a calling on his decision-making, readiness, his stable
of smarts.

With further
suspicious moves, the lone rider, seeing no one visible about the
solitary wagon, dismounted, dropped the reins, and approached the
rear of the wagon, which had settled on the grass like a dead mule.

With his weapon in
hand, the suspicious cowpoke dipped down and slipped closer to the
wagon, as alarms crested in Kincaid, who saw the mother exit the
wagon at the front canvas flaps and start to descend to the ground.
To Kincaid she looked like a flower of the prairie suddenly breaking
through the earth. He remembered her eyes aglow, the curve of her
lips as she smiled when he agreed to snare a rabbit, and he could
imagine her mind scrolling through a list of ingredient needed for
rabbit stew. A momentary flash showed his own mother in her kitchen
in Missouri in the midst of peeled potatoes, diced onions, whole
mushrooms, chunks of carrots, assorted seasonings, and a boned rabbit
browning in light oil in a large skillet. He could even smell the
finished meal as she set a full plate before him on the kitchen
table, sisters squirming, a younger brother demanding attention with
elaborate cries.

A host of images
crowded his mind, fighting for placement, for selection in the order
of preferences.

He shook himself
away from the phantom odor as the cowpoke, the odd hombre, grabbed
the woman, put his gun to her head, and yelled a few words Kincaid
could not hear clearly. A rifle was thrown clear of the wagon as a
feeble Eaton Webster climbed into the front seat of the wagon, and
the boy, quick as a rabbit’s leap in a snare, darted from the back
canvas flap and ran quickly into deep grass, apparently unseen by the
newcomer, who tossed the rifle off to the side, also into deep grass.

The gunman, the
impatient hombre, tied the old man and the woman with a length of
rope he found hanging at the side of the wagon and went to the rear,
peering inside. The 13-year old daughter then descended to the
ground, the gunman holding her tight at the waist. With another
length of rope he tied the child to the back end, knotting the rope
tightly about her body, prodding her continually even as she
screamed.

Kincaid dared not
retreat to his horse to get his rifle, but began to slither through
the grass to get closer with his pistol in hand. He had to get off
the closest shot he could before any damage was done by the cruel
cowpoke out to no good at all.

He hoped there’d
be no rabbit, no commotion, hoped that the boy would keep still and
not be found for the time being. Closer he crept, all images gone
from his mind, all memories curtailed for the moment, some of his
senses suspended; he saw no kitchen, smelled no aromas, and virtually
released all those quick associations.

The cowpoke, still
holding his weapon, reached into the back of the wagon and put his
hand to his mouth, eating voraciously. He retrieved a whiskey jug
from behind the rear flaps, holstered his gun, and drank heavily as
he walked to the side of the wagon and checked the bonds with which
he had trussed the man and woman. When he was satisfied with the
knots he had tied, he sauntered to the rear where the girl still
struggled and screamed. He slapped her face to silence her screams.

The old man and his
daughter struggled with their bindings, and Kincaid crept closer with
each second, getting to within 50 feet of the hombre who had grabbed
the girl and hit her again. That’s when a rabbit, caught in the
snare, did a loop into the air far out on the grass, like a bird had
flapped its wings into sudden flight.

The hombre twisted
about, looking where the commotion suddenly stopped, let go of the
girl, drew his weapon, and aimed it out at the grass.

That’s when the
boy leaped from the ground directly opposite the snare location,
perhaps 80 or 100 away, waved his arms in the air, and screamed,
“Over here. I’m over here.” He dove back out of sight as the
hombre, leaping away from the girl, crouching in alarm and reducing
his frame, fired a shot toward the boy, and felt Kincaid’s single
round knock the gun from his hand.

He tried to
retrieve the gun with his other hand and Kincaid, now but 30 feet
away, slammed another round into the ground at his feet. Both arms
went over his head as Kincaid pointed again, and the boy, from the
deep grass, yelled, “You got him. You got him.”

The boy’s voice
was sheer falsetto, the girl whimpered, the mother screamed joyously,
and Eaton Webster settled back in wonder of their bad and good
fortune happening in such quick order.

Kincaid tied the
intruder tightly to one of the wheels, untied the mother, who rushed
to her daughter, and then Kincaid untied the old man.

The boy rushed from
the grass and his mother hugged him even as she untied her daughter.

Kincaid, standing
over the wounded cowpoke, said, “If there was a tree handy, I’d
hang you right now.”

Eaton Webster said,
“If you won’t, I will, but I don’t see any tree either.”

The boy yelled,
“There’s one down the trail a ways. We can do it there.” He
hugged his mother back and received a great clap on the back and a
hug from his grandfather. “Good boy. Good boy,” the old man said
a number of times. He hugged his grandson again when the boy found
his rifle in the grass and handed it back to him.

Kincaid, satisfied
the way things had turned out, went off into the grass, found the
rabbit for the stew, untethered his horse and rode him back to the
wagon.

The woman said to
Kincaid, “My name is Laura Thurston, my daughter’s name is Mary,
and my son’s name is William. If you are not married and want to
get married someday, I’m the best woman in the world for the best
man I have met in this western part of the country.”

Turning away
without any reaction from an otherwise stunned Kincaid, she had a
knife in hand and was preparing the rabbit for the stew.

Kincaid, his
mother’s kitchen coming back in full force, only said, “What else
do you have to put into the stew?”

“Oh,” Laura
Thurston said, “I have potatoes, onions, a few carrots, but I don’t
have any mushrooms.”

This prairie
kitchen, Kincaid thought, just about matched his mother’s, as Eaton
Webster offered his standing on the situation, “And you have enough
seasoning and garnishes in the wagon to outfit any restaurant in St.
Louis.”